It took all day on September 22nd to get from Asuncion to Conception – there was a storm so we couldn’t drive through the Chaco on the Trans-Chaco Highway. Instead we had to drive through the eastern route, which didn’t leave us with much to see besides red clay streets and tons of cows. By the time we reached Conception it was dark and we found a taxi driver willing to relieve us of 30,000 Guarani (10,000 or 15,000 more Guarani than it should have been) to drive us 8 blocks from the bus station to Hotel Francis. We couldn’t see it in the evening darkness, but the city was super small. You could walk it in a day, a couple hours even. After such a long bus journey we were glad to have a nice bed and a couple simple sandwiches for dinner.
The next day was filled with blogging and attempts at planning our next moves. We heard plenty of different rumors about the national parks in Paraguay and only one of them seemed to be truth for every visitor: the infrastructure is nonexistent, the transportation sporadic and poor roads and routes lead to long hours and a huge expense for travelers, especially backpackers. Fortunately we managed to find out some truth about Cerro Cora, a park we had planned on visiting which guidebooks told wishful tales of cave etchings and mountains. After reading countless blogs and information YouTube videos we discovered the cave etchings are on private property and its required to have advanced permission and go through a specific guide to see them. Plus, you have to have a car because the etchings are tens of kilometers away from the park entrance. One of the blogs we read said the park rangers laughed at the backpackers when they tried to ask about the etchings… it’s just not something deemed worth seeing by those ‘managing’ the park. A half dozen blogs later, none of them telling stories of seeing abundant animal life or anything scenic, we decided to head out to a farm we found online instead called El Roble.
El Roble is owned by a local German-Paraguayan family. The owner, Peter, first started building the farm 17 years ago. It’s location 16 kilometers outside of Conception (on the road to a little city of Belen) allowed us to really get away from even the slightest hint of city life, and clear our lungs of the pollution picked up in Asuncion. We were also excited to see some of the animals he said he had on the farm. We arranged to be picked up by Peter shortly before 11:00 am, and decided to take a walk around Conception that morning.
To see how Paraguay and Conception have changed in the last few hundred years, we went to the Municipal Museum. Conception was founded by Spanish Governor Agustin Fernado de Pinedo as a base for discovering possible wealth in the Gran Chaco region that lay to its north. One potential source of wealth was the rumored oil deposits in the northern Gran Chaco. While at the museum we learned about the Chaco War; a three year war over control of the northern part of the Gran Chaco - an area of the Chaco thought to be rich in oil. It is thought that Paraguay gave the oil drilling rights over the northern Chaco to Royal Dutch Shell whereas Bolivia gave rights to Standard Oil for the same area. There is an alternative theory though which claims Argentina’s demand for oil played more of a role in sparking the Chaco War of the 1930’s.
We saw some items, including newspaper clippings, uniforms, and a telegraph from 1933 that had been used in this war. We also saw a map from 1694 which showed how large Paraguay’s territory was before the Triple Alliance War which lost them land to Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. It seems as if Paraguay’s desire for more ended up losing them key areas of land stacked with resources. These areas could have aided the development of their country, but instead they were left searching for nonexistent wealth in the dry deserts of the Gran Chaco.
Walking through the main square, Colin and I came across a church with a little museum to the side of it. There wasn’t much to see but we did find the biggest feather duster ever! A giant French maid must be missing it!
We continued to wander around Conception for a while until we founded the local Museum of Contemporary Art. There were some interesting, and quite strange, pieces here. One of the interesting ones was a drawing of the ‘seven sisters entering the sky and becoming like seven stars.’ This image looks to be representative of the seven sisters constellation, which the Abipone tribe in Paraguay worshipped as their ancestors. This constellation, scientifically known as the Pleiades, is an open star cluster with some hot blue, very luminous stars which are part of the Taurus constellation. This group of stars is known not just by the Paraguayan tribe, but all around the world – cultures such as the Greeks, the Chinese, and the Native Americans all had their own specific stories about these ‘seven sisters.’
After the museums, Colin and I rushed back to Hotel Francis to ensure we were on time for our pick-up. A short wait later Peter arrived in his truck to bring us to El Roble. It was a bumpy drive to get there, and once we arrived we were able to do a tour around the farm on our own. There was plenty of nature all around!
The first animals we went to see were some turtles near the edge of the farm. Colin tried to feed a few of them and they seemed pretty receptive at first- but then they lost interest and went back into their home! We also took a look at some of the cages Peter had set up to house birds and monkeys. There were a couple of really loud and curious parrots, and an adorable little monkey which leaped out towards our hands every time we put a finger near the cage. There was also a huge macaw with a broken beak, which was supposedly hurt in a fight with a howler monkey. When this macaw came back into the cage, the little monkey ran away and hid at the very top – obviously there was some tension between the two. We weren’t sure if it was very healthy for the animals to keep them in there together when one looked so scared!
Our favorite (stupid looking!) bird was a large one which walked around on its own – a southern screamer. It had a funny crest on top of its head and made an extremely loud and shrill screaming noise if it encountered anything it didn’t like. More importantly, it bit. A lot. Every time we’d sit down to eat the bird would cuddle up, wanting to be stroked on the head. But occasionally it would start nipping at one of us, trying to get attention and some food. Peter read us a letter that was “from the bird” – a funny letter written by two tourists who stayed on the farm which informed us that the bird did not “appreciate its picture being excluded from the website and wished to discuss the matter with Peter.” Hilarious!
We heard the bell ring, calling us to lunch in the kitchen. At El Roble we had lunch with Peter and his family – and listened to his stories about some of the crazy things he’d encountered during his time in Paraguay. He told us he once sold some pigs to a local guy and he lent him his pork box to transport the pigs in. Despite Peter’s efforts, he couldn’t get the guy to return his pork box (which is quite expensive) to him. He ended up going to the guy’s shop and picking up a lot of goods, then instead of paying he wrote on the recipe that the supplies he took were in exchange for “1 pork box, paid in full.” Years later Peter was speaking with some Paraguayans and heard that the guy was quite angry, but had let the situation go because he had in fact kept the pork box instead of returning it as promised. After more questioning, Peter learned that the local guy had used the pork box to transport a puma that had been taken from the Gran Chaco forest to the Itapúa reserve in eastern Paraguay. Peter assured us that the Itapúa reserve must have received the animal ‘at transport cost’ (rather than having purchased the animal) in order to avoid the animal being sold to a private individual.
Unfortunately, while this helps somewhat, it doesn’t resolve the bigger overall issue of animal trafficking in the region. When Peter was in Northern Paraguay he witness rooms filled with hundreds of animals which were being transported out of the forest and sold to the United States, Europe, and other regions. He found out some information – the indigenous tribes in Paraguay capture animals such as jaguar, puma, anteater, armadillo, etc. and sell them to Paraguayans who collect them and sell them on in greater numbers to larger traffickers who move them out of the country as ‘legally obtained animals.’ (Purchased from a zoo, etc.) The indigenous people don’t need much money, as many of them live quite simply, so they sell the animals for very low prices – just enough to get a few batteries for their radios and other small items. An armadillo goes for $5.00 USD, an anteater for $25.00 USD, and a puma for as low as $50.00 USD. As you can resell an anteater for more than $5,000 USD and a puma for $10,000 USD and up, this makes for a very huge (though risky) profit for animal traffickers. While Peter said the room he saw led to less animal licenses provided by the Paraguayan government, the corruption within the government doesn’t help. In my opinion, the Itapúa reserve purchasing pumas ‘at cost’ doesn’t help the situation either… and I’ve got to wonder where exactly the animals kept at El Roble came from and if they will ever get to go back into the wild.
After lunch we discovered the baby tapir around the back. We walked up to the pen it was in, and it reminded me a bit of a baby elephant because of the flexibility in its fleshy, long, unique nose. Its nose was almost like an additional arm, though it was more shorter than that of an elephant’s so couldn’t be used to pick anything big up, but it could grab small bits of grass and other foods. At one point, the baby tapir tilted its head back and opened its mouth showing us a strong set of teeth. This is apparently a technique which – according to the wiki on tapirs - is called the ‘flehmen response’ and is used to detect different smells. Later in the day the tapir was let out of its pen and we got to see how fast it could run… that thing really took off despite its heavy appearance. This makes sense because while they are prayed upon by anacondas and crocodiles while in the water, tigers and jaguars go after them while they are on land. Thus they must run fast! It was really cool to be able to see a tapir up close, and get to spend lots of time feeding it bits of grass and watching it use its interesting nose.
Colin and I were both quite tired, so we ended up spending the rest of the afternoon resting and sleeping. That evening we had a delicious fish stew for dinner with some bread and fritters, and Peter lent me his copy of the infamous go-to book for Paraguayan travel: “At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig” by John author. I would spent the next few days on the farm reading this book every chance I got – in the hammocks, in the room, and my favorite spot – in the inflatable tube in the sunny outdoor pool next to the marsh filled with birds.
The next afternoon Colin, Luke, and I decided to walk down to a nearby river, one of the tributaries of the Paraguay River called Rio Ypani. With some rough directions from Peter, we climbed locked fences, avoided cow bones(and tons of cows), and passed indigenous families wielding machetes to get to the water. Once we reached the river we took a dip in – it was freezing! The sand was a narrow strip along the riverside, but it was enough to dig our feet into. Since it was flowing pretty fast we decided it wouldn’t be wise to swim very far into it. On our walk back to the farm we heard a deep growl of some kind – actually, it sounded a lot like a deep snort. Could it be some kind of wild pig? None of us could see what it was but we passed by the area pretty quickly after that!
That evening I got pretty ill, running quite a high fever and we weren’t sure why! Colin helped by getting me some dinner (pizza and other goodies) brought to the room and early the next morning my fever broke and I started to feel a lot better. Nevertheless we continued to take it easy the next day. I spent a really lazy day reading my new borrowed book about Paraguay in the inflatable inner tubes in the pool near the marsh. It was pretty warm out and the cool water was perfect to relax in while the rest of me toasted in the sun. It was the best way to be out in nature – I could feel and see everything but I was cool and safe in the little pool! The only risk was trying to keep the book dry when water started pouring out of the pipe to fill up the pool (overflow from somewhere) … but I managed!
That afternoon (after a delicious lunch) Colin, Luke, and I were invited by Peter to “hurry up, and see a cow become artificially pregnant” – we hurried so quickly we didn’t have time to grab the camera (though that is probably for the best for our readers…) – we just rushed down to the barn where a cow was held still in the pen and waiting. A motorcycle brought two Paraguayans with a large canister of frozen bull sperm. There was no name on the canister, just a number to indicate the father. The whole process was pretty fast, just a long metal rod with the sperm vile attached on the end entering the cow and it seemed like they were done in just under 5 minutes. Peter told us that their work doesn’t seem like much when it is just one cow, but there were periods when they’d have to complete the process on hundreds or thousands of cows in just a couple of days time. The process is 90% effective, and if the cow doesn’t get pregnant the first time they’ll come back and do the repeat for free. Lots and lots of calves!
After watching the cow become pregnant, Luke and I took a walk to Belen – a city nearby. It took quite a while to walk there and once we got there the city itself looked pretty dried up! It actually just looked like a “go between” city, a place that people drive through but no one actually stays in. The only thing to do there was get some ice-cream which we did before walking back to the farm. On the way back I realized the sandals I wore were a really bad choice – my feet started bleeding. 
Everything hurt pretty bad and we rushed to get back to the farm so I could tend to my feet with the first aid kit. (They were fine.)
The next afternoon Colin and I caught the bus back to Asuncion with the hopes of getting on a tour we heard about. We stayed for five days in Asuncion biding our time hoping it would happen but we ended up going with our alternative plan – heading up north to Filadelfia to learn about the colony in the Chaco! More about that next time…
Francesca
